


Roses and Lavender

by TheTeaIsAddictive



Category: Beauty and the Beast (2017), Cinderella (2015)
Genre: Crossover, F/F, M/M, and tbh all 4 of the mains are gay disasters, it's twice the gay u for twice the fun!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-09-16 00:54:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16943934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheTeaIsAddictive/pseuds/TheTeaIsAddictive
Summary: Elena is the subject of emotional abuse, forced to become a servant in her own home at the age of ten after being orphaned and left with a cruel stepmother.Isabelle bears the burden of social ostracisation and the unwanted attentions of a man with both societal and physical power over her, while trying to realise who she truly is.Kit is grappling with the inevitability of his father's death, and the responsibility that he has to his country -- and his heart.Adam is cursed, doomed to live a half-life between humanity and beastliness, unless he can learn to love another and earn their love in return.Four lives; alone, trapped by social convention, fear, and prejudice. But when their paths meet, the possibility of a happy ending for all is realised for the first time, if they can only be kind and courageous enough to see it.





	Roses and Lavender

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cinderellasfella](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cinderellasfella/gifts).



**** When Elena was a very young child, before bed every night she was told three rules by her mother, to stand her through the tests and trials of life. 

The first, and most important, was to have courage and be kind. To live without either of these things would be an empty life indeed, and while neither was easy, both were necessary.

The second was to learn how to fix all manner of simple things, from a torn seam to a broken window pane. Being as useful as possible was the best way to ensure that she could help others, which allowed specialists to focus on their important work and not get bogged down with day-to-day repairs.

The third, and strangest thing, was to never wander so far into the forest that she couldn’t hear her own name being called from the house. When she was a toddling child, this wasn’t such a problem; the forest, with its thick, dark pines and strange animals scared her more than it intrigued her, and she was happy to stay in the grounds of the estate with the ducks, chickens, and horses. But as she grew into a girl (a very  _ young _ girl, but a girl nevertheless), she couldn’t get within 50 feet of the nearest pine without hearing a panicked, “Elena!”

Elena always returned when her name was called, in part because she was an obedient daughter and in part because despite her curiosity, the stillness of the forest frightened her. Once, she asked her mother why she wasn’t allowed to play in the forest.

“It’s not safe to go there by yourself, my sweet,” her mother replied, stroking her hair out onto her pillow. “There are all manner of creatures in the forest which are dangerous to even the most experienced of travellers like Papa. You’re still very small,” she continued, her tone changing to a more playful one, “and I’m afraid they would eat – you – up!” Her mother pounced, tickling Elena’s sides as she shrieked joyfully, and the topic was forgotten as they both calmed down and Elena was put to bed.

With those three rules in place, Elena’s childhood passed in a haze of tranquility, much in the same way that an untethered rowing boat glides lazily down a river in a hot July. But as sure as a summer storm, the peace she had known for the first seven years of her life shattered – not all in one blow, but slowly. Her sweet, loving mother, who had always been a shade paler than was healthy, one day sickened and died. Elena’s father Albert was never the same after the day she passed, and more than once over the following months Elena could hear him sobbing in the night when she couldn’t sleep. Too soon, he had to set out and trade again; in letters he sent her back from France, Elena discovered that the craftsman who he usually bought music boxes from, and whom he had known for fifteen years, had abandoned Paris for a small village town following the death of his wife. A ship sunk, and then a second, and then a third. In desperation, Albert remarried a rich widow with two daughters of her own.

Elena first met Lady Johanna Tremaine, and the Misses Ann and Susan, on a cold March morning. If she had known what dramatic irony was, she would have found it in spades that day; her new step-family was warm, kind, and accommodating. Remembering her mother’s words, Elena sought to be kind to the girls a little younger than her, who had also just lost a parent; to teach them all the little tips and tricks her mother had taught Elena; to always stay within earshot of the house. The girls were reluctant to sew their own hems and make small repairs around the house, often leaving the work for Elena instead, but they needed no encouragement to stay inside the estate. Indeed, most days they stayed inside the house itself; Johanna encouraged her daughters in matters of deportment where Elena’s had encouraged hers to run around outside. The only true fly in the ointment was that Ann and Susan had an annoying habit of calling her ‘Ella’, instead of her given name. Nevertheless, for a time things were acceptable, if not happy.

Then Elena’s father died, and Lady Tremaine became as cold, mean-spirited and demanding as she had been decent and upstanding before. Elena was stripped of her fine possessions, her comfortable room, her numerous small freedoms as lady of the house – again, so slowly that it was difficult in later years to pinpoint when exactly the tipping point had occurred – and, most humiliating of all, her very name. At ten years old she was re-christened ‘Ella’ and ordered to begin as a maid-of-all-work, among new staff whom Lady Tremaine had hired to replace those who would speak out in Elena’s favour.

But even when forced to become a servant in her own home, Ella’s spirit remained merely bruised and not broken. For although her stepsisters were too afraid to wander in the woods, Ella found a comfort and serenity there that was lacking in the estate. Her time in the forest, surrounded by flowers, birds, wild animals, and the simultaneous beauty and majesty of the world were among her happiest hours in the week, and as she grew into a woman of twenty she continued to honour her parents’ memory by obeying her mother’s three rules.

And yet, unbeknownst to Ella as she struggled through her days, the fates of three other people would soon be deeply intertwined with hers. A complicated web of cause and effect were being set in motion that very moment by two very different men. One was a travelling French merchant, lost in the western side of the forest beside Ella’s house and frightened by the sudden appearance of snow in June, urging his horse down the wrong path entirely. And in the city only two hours’ carriage ride from Ella’s estate, the Crown Prince was arguing with the other, his father the King, about the subject of his upcoming marriage.

**Author's Note:**

> alright technically i promised myself not to start posting this until i a) had a buffer and b) was done with exams but guess who's really good at ignoring self-imposed limitations??
> 
> this is, quite literally, just a prologue/teaser sort of thing. there will be more coming -- not soon, but at some point. 
> 
> drizella is called susan here because i mean seriously who names their child drizella (and i have reasons for them being 'susan' and 'ann' specifically)


End file.
